Picks and Pans Review: Once Bitten

It wasn't long ago that Lauren Hutton was one of America's top models and acting in such ambitious films as American Gigolo and A Wedding. That's what makes this film—an adolescent vampire comedy—so sad; instead of laughing, you cringe with sympathetic humiliation when Hutton, as a vampire looking for male virgins, starts nibbling on newcomer Jim Carrey's thigh. As Hutton's gay servant, Cleavon Little minces in the most stereotypical fashion. Howard Storm, who wrote and directed for such TV series as Mork and Mindy and The Bob Newhart Show, might have found his ideas for the tone of this movie—and maybe a few of the jokes—written on high school locker-room walls. (PG-13)